


A Long Way from the Cromwell Road

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Ballet Shoes - Noel Streatfeild
Genre: Gen, Sisters, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-18 07:07:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21840256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: Petrova visits Pauline in Hollywood after the war ends.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 111
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	A Long Way from the Cromwell Road

**Author's Note:**

  * For [archiesfrog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/archiesfrog/gifts).



When Petrova first sees the gleaming wide Pacific Ocean view from Pauline's back porch she says, faintly, "Goodness--it's a long way from the Cromwell Road, isn't it?" and Pauline makes no reply other than a light little laugh that's more exhaled air than sound; she must understand, in the way sisters do, that she doesn't need to. She slips her arm around Petrova's waist and lets her take in the vast expanse of blue water and glittering sands, and the long curve of the coast. Far off in the distance, the perfect white sails of a pair of boats creep lazily along the horizon, chasing the sunset.

It's impossible to see a sky like this and not imagine being up in it rather than tethered sluggishly to the ground. It's like a hunger or thirst, or a waking dream: Petrova can see it in her mind just as clearly as any one of Pauline's pictures how close she could take her precious, ancient old Puss Moth to the glittering peaks of those million tiny windswept waves before soaring skyward again, salt spray dashed wetly against the windows and the roil of exhilarated laughter filling her body from belly to mouth and bursting free into the heavens. There was a strange new sort of timidness after the war, a sort of reluctance to remember too quickly how it felt to fly for pleasure again and not merely for dear life. Even now, months after the fighting stopped, buckling herself into place and taking off seems inexplicably heavier than before. It would be different here, Petrova thinks, gazing at the vast skies above. There's so much _space_.

"I can't remember the last time I saw a sky so clear," she says wistfully.

"It's funny, though," Pauline says, letting her sister go and hopping up to sit on the porch rail facing her.

"Imagine being so used to this view that one could ever turn one's back to it!" Petrova exclaims, only half-pretending her indignance. "What's funny?"

"How much I miss the dreadful English weather sometimes."

Pauline barely even looks English these days, or perhaps that's because Petrova hasn't seen her in person for three years at least. Seeing her in the pictures is different: a beautiful ghost in shades of silver or colours that are somehow just a touch too vibrant and otherworldly. It's strange to see her like this, as comfortable as can be in shining scarlet lipstick and beautifully styled hair just to potter about the house. Were it not for her accent, as familiar as Petrova's own, she could be any other golden-skinned Californian who learned the polished eccentricities of Hollywood at the age when English children were still learning their alphabet.

"You wouldn't say that if you had to fly a plane through it in the dark without a map."

Pauline laughs again, though in an awkward way that sounds more like she wants to fill the silence than express any real amusement. "No, I daresay I wouldn't, and I don't like to think about you doing that either. Was it awful?" She wrinkles her pretty nose then and hurriedly corrects herself: "I mean I know it was awful, I'm sure it was. You're terribly brave. All the things you did - it's just unimaginable how brave you are. And poor Posy having to race like that away from Czechoslovakia in the middle of the night with all the others. I barely recognised her when she got here, she was so exhausted and frightened she looked like a ghost. I can't tell you how selfish I felt, seeing her like that and hearing about London being bombed to bits while all the time I was here in Hollywood having my nails painted and being paid a fortune to kiss Tyrone Power. It all feels so - so _pointless_."

"But it's not," Petrova says, baffled. "If only you knew how much an hour and a half of frivolity helped us, all of us. The boys especially. I only ferried the damn planes, but they'd take off in them every day knowing there was a considerable chance they'd never set foot on the earth again. Every nice thing, _everything_ , became more precious and more wonderful then before. Even your stupidest picture"--she nudges Pauline lightly with her elbow, teasing--"lifted hundreds and hundreds of spirits when we all sorely needed it. You can't think that's pointless. Please don't."

For a long moment Pauline is silent, that same faraway thinking look in her eyes that she used to get when Doctor Jakes or Doctor Smith set a particularly difficult problem in their lessons, and when her smile finally breaks through there's something lighter and freer about it. "Come on," she says, jumping down from the porch rail, "let me show you the house."

It's not very big, at least not in comparison to some of the enormous sprawling mansions Petrova passed on her long drive down the coast, but after spending the last few years crammed with a rotation of other girls into whatever living space could be spared by the airfields it might as well be Buckingham Palace. Back then, there was always the sheepy smell of socks drying in front of fires after a night splashing through puddles on the runway racing to and from planes, and the crowded heat of too many bodies trying to share a space only fit for half their number. Clothes never seemed to remain where they were left, and all the girls ended up resigned to the fact of wearing whatever blouse or shoes were closest to hand no matter whom they belonged to. Fussing only wasted time, after all, and in a war time was as scarce as any other commodity.

"Don't you get lonely?" Petrova asks without entirely meaning to, trailing her fingertips absently along the top of the spotless white piano in the corner of the living room. This time when Pauline laughs it's a real one, startled but bright.

"Really, do you think I sit about here all day doing nothing? I didn't want to share you, that's all, not when I haven't seen you in ages and ages." She sits on the luxurious pink velvet cushion of the piano bench and starts to clumsily plink out the notes of a song Petrova vaguely recognises from a film but can't name. "I keep meaning to take up lessons again but I simply don't have the time, there's always someone here gossiping about nonsense and I have to play the good hostess and make drinks and listen and gossip in return, and I'm ever so busy at the studio making those nonsense films."

Petrova sits beside her, bumping Pauline gently until she moves up the bench to let her take over the wobbling tune with much the same amount of skill. "They're not all nonsense. I liked the one with Gene Kelly. You danced beautifully, even Posy said so."

Pauline pulls a face. "But I didn't act very well. I never do. I seem to be fooling everybody well enough, I suppose."

"Aren't you happy?" Petrova asks in mild surprise. She stops prodding the piano keys and gestures at the window. "How can you be unhappy with a sky like that staring you in the face every morning when you open your curtains?"

"I don't care about the sky, Petrova, I'm not you." It doesn't sting because she says it with no malice or harshness, only a muted sort of weariness. "I thought I'd get over wanting to be on the stage if I tried hard enough for the cameras. I told myself I'd work and work in these silly pictures and make all this money because out of all of us I was the only one with the chance to do that, and goodness knows we needed it. But now Posy's doing well enough for herself, and you've got your license and your nice little flat, and my contract finishes soon, and with everything all lined up together like that it's becoming more and more difficult to think of reasons to stay."

Petrova leans against her, taking Pauline's hand and giving it a little squeeze because she's never been terribly good with words and doesn't quite know how to say _I know Posy's too self-centred to really understand what you've done for us both but I'll never forget it, ever_ in a way that won't make her nose burn with the hot embarrassing onset of tears. "Gene Kelly seems like a rather splendid reason to stay."

"Don't be awful, he's married."

"I'd stay for Marlene Dietrich."

Pauline looks amused. "I know. I'll introduce you." 

"I bet David Niven could make you stay."

"Also married, I'm afraid."

"Then don't stay. Even for this glorious sky."

Can it be as simple as that? She wonders if perhaps Pauline has only been waiting all this time for somebody to tell her she's allowed to go anywhere in the entire beautiful world and find a part of it that doesn't feel like a prison.


End file.
